The Bechdel Cast - Mulan (1998) with Ceda Xiong

Episode Date: March 26, 2020

Warriors Jamie and Caitlin join forces with special guest Ceda Xiong to discuss Mulan (1998) and battle the patriarchy.(This episode contains spoilers)For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.Follow @slobear on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's right, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious

as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's

Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do.

What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister, or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, Bechtelheads. This is Jamie Loftus. This is Caitlin Durante. So this is an episode that we recorded shortly before the lockdown began.

So we didn't put anyone in danger. No, we didn't. Just so you know, it was still allowed back then, two weeks ago, with the wonderful returning guest Sita Zhang about Mulan because originally Mulan was going to be coming out. Right. That obviously is no longer the case or if it's released it won't be in theaters because what are theaters really anymore? But we just wanted to say hello. Yes. And that we hope you're doing well.

We hope you're feeling well and staying inside if you can and if you do have to be out working we are with you and we hope we could be a nice part of your day and that we love you also as to be expected i'm sure this will come as a surprise to no one but the upcoming live shows that we had scheduled um at least the ones in austin and boston the austin one we had announced and sold tickets for it was sold out we unfortunately had to cancel that and everyone will be refunded we are still waiting to hear about la on the 15th so we'll see stay tuned um in the meantime if you need extra bechtel in your life our matreon is there for you with extra episodes we know a lot of people have been burning through

a lot of episodes quickly um and we have plans in april to do some commentary tracks for you to watch while you're at home audio commentary april yeehaw baby. In the meantime, please enjoy this episode and Mulan. Enjoy. On the Bechdel cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast hi everybody I was like I was like where do I I was trying to think of a fun in oh I don't know I'm just excited for this episode hi everyone welcome to the Bechdel cast my name is Jamie Loftus my name is Caitlin Durante and this is our podcast about the portrayal of women in movies uh where we use the Bechdel test ever heard of it to jump off have a jumping off point.

And then we, you know, just do a deeper dive. Not the whole podcast. Common misconception. I love when someone's like, oh, I've listened to your podcast, which first of all, there's never a need to lie about that. I've never been less hurt. Like when someone's like, I haven't listened to your podcast. I'm like, makes sense.

You know, like, why would you listen to a podcast? To shame our audience. Yeah, you silly sods. But I like when someone's kind of faking it and then they're like, oh, that's the one where you spend an hour and a half figuring out if it passes the Bechdel. I'm like, do you think we just print out the script? And they're like, hmm, I don't know. It looks like that's a male character.

So that line isn't going to pass. On to the next line. We should do an April Fool's episode that is just that, like us going through the script of the Shawshank Redemption and just doing what people who are lying about listening to the show think it is. Anyways, this is the Bechdel. We use the Bechdel test, which is a metric invented by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel wallace test uh that requires that a piece of media have an exchange between uh two female

identifying characters with names that is about something other than a man should be easy enough especially for this movie right well well i don't know it's kind of the no well it's complicated sometimes that's the thing not a perfect metric but also we just have a lot to talk about today I'm so excited for today this episode has been a long time coming we were going to do it a while ago but and then we found out that there was a live action reboot of this movie coming out. And then we had to postpone doing this episode by like a year. Yeah. Which has been a painful wait, but the wait is over. Here we are.

We're talking about Mulan. Woo. Finally. Finally. Yes. The day has come. And yeah, we have, there's so much ground to cover. So without much further ado, let's introduce our guest.

Yes. She is a writer, a comedian. She's been a guest of ours previously on the crazy rich asians episode and she's also made a contribution on our gremlins episode which we were all very grateful for and she's amazing it's cita shong hi thank you for having me welcome back for coming back so excited to talk about mulan which was one of the first jokes i ever wrote wait actually about mulan wait really what was it i think i had this bit that i was you know i recently booked a job i got a role in the live action remake of mulan and people in the audience

would clap because sometimes you go to an audience that actually doesn't know you're joking yeah so it's very sweet when they do they're like clapping and then i would say well i i'm gonna be playing mushu and because it's always been my dream to play eddie murphy so yeah i guess they've brought back mushu for the live action remake wait but not not every eddie murphy is not voicing it but i just saw an IMDb thing where Mushu. No way. I don't know if Mushu talks. I don't know. Maybe Mushu is like. Well, maybe my information is wrong, but I just today watched one of those like IMDb.com originals where they like do a little.

They're all bangers. But they're like, people were wondering, would Mulan's animal friends return for the live action reboot and no one knew for sure but it seems like moosh at least moosh i don't know about the cricket what does he what does he look like is it like one of those like scary like lion king like photorealistic like i mean he's a real komodo dragon you're like that's not why i come to the movie but it would be so weird based on what i've seen in the trailers which seems like a like for a disney movie it's like a gritty action it's the first pg-13 well it's pg-13 of the yeah of the reboots it's the first pg-13 because i guess that they're they're like they're

doing some real war in there huh yeah so i mean mulan is making some like serious like i guess it's called wushu wushu fantasy kind of move so lots of wire work that's really like body intensive it should be incredible to see i'm really excited about it i'm like i mean is mulan the first disney princess who presumably kills people oh we don't see her rack up a body count in the cartoon but i feel like it's implied that she would have killed she kills shane the the main bad guy right she lit up someone yeah she kills someone well also i mean she crushes a lot of people with that avalanche she maybe kills a lot yeah a lot of people are in that avalanche but they also seem to mostly come back and survive that although i have a lot of thoughts about how

the how the enemies of on this in this war are portrayed. Yeah, super racist. Yes. Like, I mean, we have so, so much because they're like, oh, like people who are on the opposite side of the war, evil, we're going to draw them darker than the rest of the cast and they're zombies. And they have like animal eyes. Yeah, like the dark,

like it's the way that it looks like the beast in beauty and like, yeah. It's a crazy way to regard the Huns, which is the stand-in for the invaders of China at this time. But it's so funny because he's got fangs, too. And he rises from the dead. And you're like, this is not human. And this was the first time watching this movie that I love.

But there are some things where you're like wait a second i don't know what this war is about no what if mulan is on the wrong side of the war like we don't know what they're fighting over what if the huns are just trying to like they like uprise against like a very like totalitarian empire we don't know they don't and they don't tell us they're just like well we love mulan so she probably on the right side of the word but you're like there we don't we don't that's never guaranteed war is fucked up did you that's my official statement perhaps glorifies war a bit yes but that said it's also a cartoon it's i mean but does that make it better no i don't know right i don't know i don't know if there's another disney movie that deals with war like i mean i

guess lion king in a sense like the skirmishes with uncle scar it's kind of warlike that is yeah because it's like different but it's so isolated yeah it's such a small battle no this is like this is historical there's an actual war that happens there's people that are divided politically and then there's the the sort of the duty to the country which is like what mulan really stands for right like there are some like nationalism undertones super nationalistic duty to the i mean which i don't know i'm like i don't even know how to feel about that but but it it ended up the military stuff in this you're just like whoa there it's just very and i was thinking about that because there's been a lot of writing about the uh reboot and about they're like

well is this movie like being too you know over the top with like funded by military stuff and like nationalism stuff and it's like that may be true in some ways but it's like most like i mean so many popular american movies are funded by the military that i feel like it's disingenuous to be like michael bay ever directed the entire transformers is funded by the fucking marines like it's so true we talked about this in independence day with lindsey ellis but like there's this like such a well-documented history of like people who have a good relationship with the military get free tanks to use in their movies and their movies make a billion dollars and you're just like i don't know military industrial

complexes is is oh boy is it oh boy. Is it not good? Quote me, quote me on that. So wait, let me get this straight. She's in full camouflage. War? War is bad?

War is bad? I'll say it, I'll say it, And the military industrial complex, also bad? Also bad. Oh, okay.

I know we went into this being like, maybe it's good, but I'm here to tell you, it's actually very bad. I mean, the, the, the part of the military sequence i found interesting

was like how whimsical the army training was that was definitely like that's definitely like a place in a disney movie where that should happen because in most war movies the the training is definitely not whimsical right this was just like climb a giant pole with a belt around your waist and then also a question is lee shan like the only uh male love interest that takes off his shirt in a disney movie well aladdin is pretty shirtless aladdin is pretty but but he's his nipples are covered that's true lishan is like fully showing us male nipple his his body is very suddenly you're like oh it's right there hello and then i like went back to my like i was like five when this movie came out i was just like oh wow like just like your weird little like baby brain being

like this is different like this is this is new yeah i i mean i remembered when that scene happened i mean hot yes um well let's dive in officially yeah um we already talked about the military industrial complex we've hardly begun um cedar what's your relationship history with this movie so i i was talking to caitlin a little bit earlier and i kind of missed the boat on this movie when i was growing up because i got a little too old for mulan when it first came out so i actually didn't watch it until i turned like 30 oh wow and so I came to it super late watched it when I was 30 so moved by it totally cried after like a first viewing as an adult I was like oh wow the you know a story about the uh headstrong only daughter of a Chinese family I can't possibly relate to

that so it was very it was very like i should have known that this was coming and i still was not prepared for how much it moved me um and i watched this uh again just like right before the podcast just to refresh my brain on the details and it's still a very very action-packed story that has a lot to do with how the protagonist is self-motivated and i think that is something that like we love to see in female characters and she's just so she's so smart and has her own morality and she has such conviction and that's really like what gets her through all of the movie really yeah and i love that turn at the end where she has to dress as a concubine so she successfully passes as a woman there's a lot of like drag king stuff in the beginning which I really love and there's like

kind of drag queen stuff towards the end I was like this is such kind of a drag centric movie there's a lot of drag much like yeah I mean the the gender performance like the female gender performance in this movie is like it's kind of fucking incredible like it is really yeah yeah talk more about it there's so much well we will we definitely will i mean there's so much to talk i mean i because there are certain elements i just have never watched this movie in not uh like i love mulan lens that's the only way i've ever watched this movie is like this is one of my favorite movies ever uh this movie came out when i was five years old and i don't remember seeing it for the first time but i know that i saw it like 500 times we did a whole mulan halloween in my family that um i checked the pictures i'm like okay we were not racist because you have to check when you're a white kid you have to be like did

my parents do a good job i think that they're pretty good job okay i'll show you the picture but but it should be the front page of the podcast for the record uh because you gotta be careful but i yeah like i was i loved it so much i loved just everything about it the stevie the one of the most cursed disney musical collaborations in history between stevie wonder and 98 degrees that song and the credits i was like what is happening i was ranking i was like i think it's the second most cursed collab i love it but it's the only more cursed collab of the disney renaissance is in sync and phil collins that's the worst one true to your heart kind of slaps it's good

but you're just like how did these how did these people meet each other wait was that like Tarzan yeah okay yeah I think I've mentioned this before but in my favorite press junket of all time which is NSYNC with Phil Collins and and it's like peak NSYNC it's 1999 and NSYNC like Lance Bass is like yeah Phil Collins is pretty much the sixth member of NSYNC I wonder how Genesis feels about that Phil Collins is just grimacing you're just like this is the greatest thing I've ever seen uh all that to say i loved mulan at the time i feel like it was the first genuinely empowered disney princess i had ever seen um it was because there is like some 90s girl power elements to this but it really hit for me sure um my cousin was warrior mulan i was reflection mulan and my brother was mooshu you were super deep i was really deep at the mulan

we were this it was a whole family like we were just like we're a mulan we're mulan heads so i love it yeah what's your history with it um cita i'm like you where i had aged out of kind of disney movies and i joke about having aged back into them because I'm going to see Onward tomorrow. But yeah, I was 12 when this movie came out. So I was like, I'm too cool for cartoons. So it just like came out at the wrong time for me, I guess. And I and so I didn't grow up with it. And I think I only saw it maybe once or twice, just sort of in passing, not paying that much attention to it in my like like kind of more adolescent or early adult years and then i've watched it three times now to prep for the episode

because i'm like shit like i hate that i missed this when i was younger because like it's so good like yeah it's i yeah i i mean there's there's plenty to talk about but i love so much about it i love the songs i love the music and i love there's like to talk about, but I love so much about it. I love the songs. I love the music. And I love, there's like all these great montages. This is the first viewing that I, I think because I haven't seen this movie in like six or seven years. I think this is the first time I've seen it since I have become a BD Wong stan. I didn't realize he was, I don't think I knew who he was the last time I saw this movie,

like in high school. And like, I was like, wait, what? Like, oh, so much good stuff. There's so much. And yeah, I mean, you were touching on just the character of Mulan, just like being so smart and resourceful and outspoken. And like, yeah, it gives us a lot to talk about. It's also, I think, for girls that weren't like kind of girly girls like it has that resounding like um

the reflection mulan song that's very much about like trying to figure out who you're supposed to be in this world that tells you that you're supposed to be one way but you feel a totally different way yeah and that kind of plays into the gender performance of it sure but but that's not also probably like i was thinking about mulan as a whole for for young women i was like this is a very good movie to also watch if you're like a female comic amongst a lot of male comics where you're like when she's trying to fit into the army i was like oh yeah i felt that before where you're like everything is disgusting but you just have to like go along with it like yeah this is great and people are still like we hate you you're like cool yeah

I was just talking about how we were getting ready for this episode today in a room with um two gay men and they were both like reflection like spoke to me so much when I was a kid oh yeah of yeah I mean because it is such like a general theme for people who feel like they don't fit into what the prescribed norm is where like it it's and then I did some research I was like oh I wonder if this is a common read and it seems like there is like a fair amount of writing from queer and trans writers who are like reflection was like it yeah oh I easily see that there's that line where she says like when will my reflection show who I am inside I mean and I think we've heard a similar read

in the little mermaid where like Ariel's transformation um yeah like feeling like you're in the wrong skin and friend of the cast uh Joan Ford spoke to that a bit yes yes definitely so I mean I feel like that's always a cool there's plenty of criticism of like huge pop culture disney movies but the fact that like there are those big themes that they can speak to that make kids who feel out of place feel heard is really cool yeah so and there's such massive movies too yeah basically everyone sees them so it's it's not just like oh this is a message that like a few people see. It's like this is a message like across a generation. Kids can see it.

That does make a difference. It really does. One of my closest friends from high school, she immigrated from Haiti around the time this movie came out. And it was one of the first movies she saw in America. And she was like so impacted by it that she majored in Chinese in college. She's fluent and she works in international relations now. Wow. I'm like Mulan, like people love Mulan.

It changed lives. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. All right. So I'll do the recap and then we'll get into the discussion. We open, we're in ancient china there's an attack a hun invasion led by the big scary shanyu and the emperor is like this will not stand we got to recruit people from my army to fight these invaders then we meet mulan she is preparing yay kind of cheer she's good

she is preparing to go to the village matchmaker because her family wants her to be matched with a good husband so that mulan can bring honor to the family because that's how a woman in the world of this movie brings honor to her family we meet the mom we meet her mom and we're like oh i wonder if this relationship will be explored and then it's like no no and they're like funny grandma trope uh i'm like okay it's kind of funny and then her meeting with the matchmaker goes disastrously and she tells mulan that you will never bring honor to your family. And that's when Mulan sings reflection about how, you know, maybe being a bride is not the part she's supposed to play. Then the army recruiters show up. And one of them is this guy, Chi Fu. And he's like, hey, the emperor is ordering one man from every family to serve in the imperial army and mulan's father is prepared to serve

but mulan thinks that he should not have to fight i think it's implied that he was already um a warrior in a previous war yes he had been injured and he was injured and he like walks with a cane and stuff like that so she's like he should not have to fight so she decides to take his place um she cuts off her hair. She dons her father's armor to disguise herself as a man and then rides off into the night. And her family discovers that she has left. But they realize that if they reveal what she's done, she will be killed. So they can't go to stop her.

Meanwhile, Mushu. Yes. Eddie Murphy. Yeah. Eddie Murphy is also there there's a lot of hijinks and mishaps here but basically he's like all right i'm gonna go watch over and help mulan i feel like he's just kind of warming up for shrek this whole movie like he literally is just like maybe I could make a billion dollars off of doing this he's just warming up for donkey exactly uh-huh and never forget Shrek never forget Shrek never forget how could we okay so with the help of Mushu and Mulan's lucky cricket she goes off to join the army and meanwhile a young soldier named shang voiced by

bd wong and the singing voice is donny osmond by the way i know the mask singer himself he came in second place the first season um uh he is made captain of this army and i didn't catch this at first but it's like a nepotism thing higher basically where his father is the general i didn't either i don't know why when i was a kid i i'm like i don't know if i was just i was so hyper focused on like i love mulan but i never realized that li shang was nepotism and that he was grieving for like half of the movie because his father dies oh my god i totally forgot that i thought that scene where he sticks the sword down puts his dad's helmet on top and mulan sees him grieve i was like that's the moment she was like panties are wet a man showing emotion emotion exactly on the battlefield right after his father's death

we're just like we're all there we're in love after she's seen him as shirtless and then you're like you're like yeah yeah inappropriate but you you get the sentiment and then that's like i think a great moment in terms of like showing how like i mean they don't go all the way with masculinity in in this movie and kind of examining it but the way that you know he has to to maintain his role of authority compartmentalize like enormous grief yeah totally and then he gets on his horse and he's like it's fine and everyone's like oh it isn't and then they have to you know yeah war war indeed they have to war war is bad war we learned today in addition to other things

yes um okay so he is made captain and he begins training this group of recruits that Mulan has joined. And she says, hey, guys. Yes, I am definitely a man. And my name is Ping. But Mulan as Ping kind of gets off on the wrong foot accidentally with a lot of the other soldiers. But eventually she wins them over and they become friends. And the training begins and Mulan is not good at anything. She almost gets sent home.

But then there's that fun training montage and we see her get really good at everything. And one of the greatest songs in Disney history. Be a man! It's so... And in that long slapper montage you see the mary jane trope entirely like done away with because it was it would be like i feel like a classic disney mistake to be like and she got to war and she just was good at war like but it's like you see that she

learns it and really like commits to it and so do the men around her and it's like it's a struggle for everyone and it's like goofy but at least you're like okay at least they're showing like it's not it's not that mary sue like right chosen one kind of narrative like she really right we busted her ass to be a great soldier we see that in aladdin with jasmine where she's like awesome at like flipping over across buildings and she's like i'm a fast learner and she's like yeah it's like you've never left your palace like how are you right you're just like you've never left any yeah there when would you have practiced that right that's a really good point because i was

reading about the legend and in the chinese legend she actually learned martial arts and sword fighting and everything from her dad but if you had gone that route with the story you would have been not able to have the training montage because I think what what's so great about the training montage in addition to the song and everything is that it's the camaraderie with her friends that's that's what builds like an army right like yeah speaking of the military industrial complex one of the many reasons that so many men are so wedded and bonded to it is the commonality of experience of going through war absolutely training yeah yeah and like seeing that i don't know i like that they not only managed to show that but they managed to show it in maybe the

most entertaining way in the history of war movies. I know. Because I compared this training montage to the boot camp sequence in Full Metal Jacket. And you're just like, oh, these are totally very different. I was like, we know which one is more realistic. But which one has Donny Asmon? Which one's fun? Right. OK, so then she goes through the montage.

She gets really good at everything. She's the only one who can figure out how to get to the top of the pole to retrieve the arrow that Shang had fired up there. I cried. It's so good. When she gets to the top. She's so smart. And by the end, she's at the top of her class, so to speak.

Meanwhile, the Hun army is advancing, and Mulan and her fellow soldiers are sent to fight. They come upon Shan Yu and his giant army of Huns who start to advance on them. And they're about to aim a cannon at Shan Yu. But Mulan is like, no, I have a better idea. And she aims it at the mountain, which causes that huge avalanche that buries Shan Yu's army. And everyone's like, hip hip hooray for ping but mulan as ping has been wounded and when her wound is tended to that's when everyone discovers that she is a woman right and in one of the re-watching it goofiest music stings i've ever heard of like when Li Sheng comes in oh when Li Sheng comes into the tent

and Mulan is revealed to have titties there's a sinister titty sting where it goes like it goes like dun dun dun and it's like she has tits and then everyone's like like it's so weirdly soapy in the middle of this great movie but I like rewound i was like wait a second they did that and then there is a sinister titty music that is like i guess that that like if you're the mute but you're like that's a little on the nose but yeah like she has tits well when it's revealed that she is a woman um they're like this is treason and the penalty was supposed to be death but because she saved shang he spares her life because of that rewarding male mediocrity i have to date this man because he didn't murder me um

doesn't seem fair no so instead they just abandon her and she feels as though she's a failure and she's about to turn and go back home but this is also when she sees shanyu's army rise up from the avalanche like the snow and she realizes she has to go warn the army so she does this she arrives in the city no one will listen to her because she's a woman and these men do not and they view her as a traitor yes and they're having a parade for her work but yes they're taking credit for yes oh it's in fury yeah she's like the huns are about to kill you and they're like go away shut up yeah while they're like spending however much money literally taking credit for her work you're just like

what a beautiful parade that she cannot get through that she gets no credit for right god it's like uh it's a celebration of her accomplishment that she has to overcome yes yeah so so rude um so and then during this victory celebration the huns attack and kidnap the emperor but mulan and her friends fight back and dress in drag while doing it which um to trick the huns yes they save the emperor and mulan kills shanyu and the emperor is like wow mulan you're so cool here's a spot on my council and she's like no i'm good actually i'm gonna go home to my family she returns home her family realizes oh you have brought us great honor um for being a war hero and then shang shows up and

he's like oh you're cute I just realized this is where like in retrospect you're just like yeah I'm not crazy I'm not happy about the ending but and that's the movie

so let's take a quick break and then we'll come right back to discuss. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Oh, my God, I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God.

I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom.

I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas

on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Dragged. I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case. So I

basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you

giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in. Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle

to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case listen to basket case every tuesday on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back yes um so because we just finished caitlin's famous recap oh thanks um i think that on the rewatch um the ending is one of the parts of the movie that holds up the least well for me because I feel like you know at the climax of the movie the whole country bows to her I'm like weeping it's the most cathartic amazing like this woman who has been through this intense sacrifice and like she's done so much and she's finally like just getting credit

for what she did. It's so just like you don't get to see that a lot, especially in a kids movie. And then to see what the like, where that leads to is I feel like you see this whole movie of Mulan kicking open this door that was not open for women. And then the movie ends with that door just kind of shutting behind her.

And it especially bothers me in the way that they wrote that scene between her and the emperor, and then how the emperor talks to Li Sheng about her after she leaves. Which he basically is just saying she's not like the other girls. It doesn't make him reconsider, should women be given more opportunities? Should women be allowed to be in the military? He's like, you don't meet a girl like that every dynasty, wink, wink. And it's just like totally missing the point of what the movie seemed to have such a great understanding of. And they're just like, oh, like, yeah, women can do stuff as long as they're like this woman and even even she is just sent

back home to domesticity and a boyfriend and she has to be okay with that right like to be fair that is how the legend also kind of ends and legend ends so much worse yeah it's so much more tragic like but it's like it's 1998 and i feel like a movie that does so much more than most movies made for young girls do. Like, they could have taken some artistic license there and could have given her a life. Right. That didn't have to just do it. And she has a boyfriend now. And that, and the end.

Right. And I have complicated feelings about this because, like, the emperor is like, hey, you're so great that I want to offer you a position on my council. He's like giving him this this position of power. And she refuses to do that. She's like, I'd rather go home and be with my family. And that's her choice. But also the movie makes her make that choice. And like they don't need to do that.

I don't know. It just felt weird. And I was glad that at least it's like oh she was offered an opportunity but that almost makes it feel weirder to me of like her whole like the disney renaissance model of like the heroine at the beginning sings about what she wants and it's to be like seen for being different and that's okay and then at the end she just decides to be the same like it doesn't even feel consistent with the character yeah i feel like all of those two those two points are really good consistent with the way that this movie portrays mulan i think maybe what they were trying to do is harken back to the myth which has mulan being like i love my family

so much and war is going to come between my family and i have to stop the war so that i can be with my family and i don't think the movie does that very well i think the movie focuses more on her individuating herself improving herself and so it is distinctly disappointing at the end when she reverts when she gets i mean lee shen is a boyfriend which is great but like that's not that doesn't feel like where we've been led yeah and that also like was never her goal like it didn't we weren't led to believe that she she the movie starts with her outright not wanting a relationship in any way to the point where she's like really frustrated that it's being forced upon her yeah and so i mean it's it's i feel like at least it's like you know she's choosing her partner and that is different from what is being presented to her at the beginning.

But it just feels like a not a fair compromise for the character that we've. I don't know. And it's weird because it's like when I was a kid and when I was watching this movie growing up, I never really thought of it that way. But watching it now, I was it was it's not like I mean it's still an incredible movie but I was kind of like I feel like Mulan would want more I don't know right and what what's your like ideal ending how would you want to see her end up my ending okay I was trying I was trying to think about this I if she ends up with Li Sheng great but I feel like if her and Li Sheng they work together maybe and like she's proven Li Sheng, they work together, maybe, and like, she's proven herself to be this incredible soldier, and maybe they could work alongside each other

as and which I mean, that's probably not historically feasible, but it's a Disney movie. Like, I'd like to see her go on and like, in my head, I'm like, flash forward to Mulan training young girls in like physical combat. Like, that's badass. Even if it's in her physical combat. Like that's badass. Even if it's in her hometown and her dad's there and he's like, I'm so proud. And her mom is like, I wish I was a character.

And I wish I had it in her life. Right. Right. But it's like Mulan training young girls and maybe she's home with her family, but it's like something of like, she has something that's more than what she was rebelling against at the beginning.

Right. My version of the ending would be if she accepts that position on the something that's more than what she was rebelling against at the beginning. Right. Mine would, my version of the ending would be if she accepts that position on the emperor's council, again, assuming it's, he's not like, you know,

an evil dictator. We don't know the circumstances of this dynasty. We're not sure. So hopefully, you know, he's very progressive. He's like more women on the council. And right.

Exactly. I mean, hopefully that's why he offers to move on the job, more women on the council and right exactly i mean hopefully that's why he offers mulan the job but she accepts the position she moves her family to like the imperial city so she can still be with her family but you know she's got this powerful position in politics and stuff like that and you know if she ends up with shang fine but for the movie to end that way where like he shows up and he's like hey i just realized you're hot yeah that just feels so tacked on especially because like what you were saying cita we're right around the the low point of the movie screenwriting degree i hate to mention it but um she has this whole enlightened realization where she's like oh i um maybe i didn't do this

for my father because that's what seems like her motivation is initially where she's like oh i um maybe i didn't do this for my father because that's what seems like her motivation is initially where she's like i'm gonna save my father's life and i think that's probably still part of why she makes that choice but she realizes like maybe i didn't do this for my father maybe i what i really wanted was to prove that i could do things right like because we see her failing so miserably at like being what's expected of her as like a traditional woman and a bride so she's like but here's something i think i could be good at and it turns out she is and it ends up i feel like those themes end up kind of fighting with each other a little bit where they just like by subscribing kind of strictly to the like mythic mulan that has existed in culture for thousands of years.

And then also adding in these 90s themes, but the 90s themes don't really pay off in the way that it's written. And they kind of just, they're like, well, it, we have basically this ending. So let's just keep it. But it is like, she has that line where she literally like, maybe I wanted to do things right. Maybe I wanted to look in the mirror and see someone worthwhile. And that's like, I mean, she articulates that herself.

And I feel like that desire is maybe paid off a little bit in the fact that, you know, China bows to her. She gets credit and she gets validation. But to think that that is like, okay, well, I'm done. I'm self-actualized and now i can just be a wife just doesn't i don't know it feels like it undoes a lot of what had been set up i like that they try to add these modern themes but i just feel like they're not fully paid off on yes it's like the the themes are modern but the actions are historic but not but then the historical actions undermine

the themes yeah it ends up kind of like being like, yeah, in a little bit of conflict with each other. Yeah. I just think maybe in history too, women have always found ways to, to enact rebellion in ways that you just, just not obvious.

And, and even historical record is so shitty at keeping record about women. In general, who knows if mulan didn't okay so in my version mulan yes decides that living as a man is pretty awesome so she goes back to her hometown tells her parents maybe like assuages them or does something where she like assuages their fears because there's going to be news all over about her and she just goes on and lives as a man and like figures out like how because she's so successful as a man i love this

i let uh listeners please share your ideal ending of mulan because we all agree the one that we get isn't the perfect one and uh i mean there's just seems like there's three better ideas in the room right now i think so maybe the live action one will you know it'll be closer to one of these could i really quickly share just the um the source material just a quick summary of what the kind of legend yes um and how it goes because i wasn't totally i knew that it was based on something but i didn't know if it had something to do with history or if it was strictly legend. It seems like it's legend. But so here's a quick wiki summary. Yes. It is officially based on the Ballad of Mulan that goes a little something like this.

It's set in the Northern Wei era, which is between 386 and 536, which is like somewhere in the time that the movie is also supposed to take place this is ad or bc ad ad but you know long time ago we don't know what the politics are at this time we still don't know who's right i try i was really trying to do research of like is this a real war yes who is right i i couldn't figure it out i got confused i'm sorry uh the poem starts with mulan sitting worriedly at her loom as one male from each family is called to serve in the army to defend the tuoba realm from the rurin invaders her father is old and weak and her younger brother which i'm like oh he caught a man well he's a dog remember when she's like little brother little brother yeah

he's a dog the dog wow well her younger brother is just a child or a dog so she decides to take her father's place and bids farewell to her parents who support her which i think is an interesting difference if she tells her parents i'm doing this i kind of like that better anyways she's already skilled in fighting having been taught martial arts sword fighting and archery by the time she enlists in the army which i think is what you were saying about her dad and the interesting thing about chinese women is that like kind of feminism went through different waves. I mean, the kind of feminism that we know about ancient Chinese women during the Confucian periods are like very like subservient and like like supposed to obey the patriarchy. But Chinese women also went through periods of time where they were the head of the household and they were like more pushed to the forefront and those records are lost history of course it's comforting to be like maybe it

happened there it seems like mulan especially because like for a story to persist for this long it's like it seems like this story was written in a period where women had more agency than possibly they do right now um so after 12 years of fighting the army so she's in the military for 12 years in the legend after 12 years the army returns and the warriors are rewarded mulan turns down an official post and asks only for a camel to carry her home wouldn't it be great if she left on a camel uh she's greeted with joy by her family mulan dons her old clothes and meets her comrades

who are shocked that in the 12 years of their enlistment together, they did not realize she was a woman. So that's the story. Okay. So I feel like that element, the ending is kind of pulled from the legend. But then like some of the parts,

I think about the legend that are really cool are left out like what if mulan left with her parents blessing that's kind of wild and like what if her father had actively trained her yeah that would have been i don't know there's like parts of this ancient story that feel more progressive than the story we're right i wonder if like the this 98 adaptation was like well let's really heighten the patriarchy here but then also like bow down to it by the very like in the very final scene of the so did y'all check out the credit the writing credits for this movie yes so so the story is adapted by Robert C

somebody somebody and then the actual screenplay is written by like five different people. One person being, I think, Chinese. I think there's one person of the five person team. Rita Cao is Chinese. Her other writing credits I found were Toy Story 2 and My Little Pony movie. She's solid.

Solid record. Totally solid. I was reading on Quora. I just got curious about what the chinese think about mulan and i just love quora and all its freaky people that write like 10 pages for every answer uh and one of the uh the commenters said that kung fu panda was a better depiction of chinese culture and i cannot disagree because kung fu Panda got a lot of things right. I gotta re-watch it. Let's talk about, I mean,

the depiction of Chinese culture in this movie because a lot of the criticism I've seen around this, and again, I'm like a dumb white lady from Massachusetts, so my knowledge is limited, but reading just a little bit about the criticism surrounding it, it seems like there there is this like disconnect in adapting eastern legend to western pop culture like there is like some disconnect there that like it works for western audiences in some ways in a way that

like doesn't it doesn't right i think so some of the the reading that I did was that Mulan as a like the 4,000 lines poem that it is like you know a lot of Chinese students have to take the entrance exams that allow them to qualify for university and Mulan is part of that curriculum oh wow so so it's essentially like the hardest test you have to take it you have to know like 4 000 lines of a poem like mulan has a totally different kind of place in the chinese like psyche it's kind of like people resent it it's like like if you had to read you know like catalys or something like latin geeks would know what catalys is but that's the kind of test that it is you know yeah so that that that places it in a different like it's very reverential but also very scholarly so there's that part of it but i think what i noticed in just the production design of the movie is that they

just mashed up asia in the movie so like the soldiers uniforms look japanese they look like very samurai influence and then there were a ton of drums which are very korean and so i think when they when this movie went to China, I think Chinese people were just like, what the actual fuck? Like, what the fuck am I looking at on screen right now? And there's this tiny dragon that's voiced by Eddie Murphy, you know? And also named like Mushu, which is like offensive in itself. Yeah, it's named after an Americanized Chinese dish.

Like, it's like, even that in itself yeah it's named after an americanized chinese dish like it's like yeah even that in itself like i read some because i i i didn't realize that mushu is in the new movie i thought he was cut out because there was a lot of valid criticism i might be very wrong it might just be a dragon who is probably like photorealistic but like cgi horrifying to look at yeah i i can't say but i i when the first because a lot can't say. But I, when the first, because a lot of the analysis I was reading was when the first trailers were coming out and people were just kind of reacting to it.

But, you know, some American audiences were like, where's Eddie Murphy? And then the response was like, that character was offensive in a lot of ways and kind of like, and also, like, I mean, at least was meaningless and had no grounding in anything that was realistic and then at worst was like yeah kind of like offensive and like you just named something after uh like americanized chinese dish that you've had

yeah white male writer um of which there are three on this movie yes there's a lot of them there are three on this movie. Yes, there's a lot of them. From what I could tell, it was four white writers, two women, and one person of Chinese heritage who is a woman. You would think, couldn't she just write the movie? You would think. But no, you need the backup of some people such as, and it's kind of, I mean, it seems a little sinister to me that there are some writers here who, there's two writers in particular who are cishat white male writers who went, literally went to Harvard. but especially this writer, Philip Lezebnik, who is a writer who seems to have specialized in animated children movies with nonwhite protagonists.

Oh, in spite of the fact that he is a cishet white male who went to Harvard. It's very sinister to me that you could trace a whole generation of kids worth of like held misinformation if not racism to like particular writers but philip lizabnik has credits such as pocahontas probably the worst one of all mulan the prince of egypt the road to el dorado the lost treasure of the knights templar like just movie after movie after movie that mischaracterizes non-white protagonists

and kind of creates these very western narratives around cultures that they couldn't possibly understand I mean those

were hits too they were all hits they were all hits and I think that's the only color Disney really sees right the only color Disneyney sees is green green switch and then the other writer who kind of has

the same thing is chris sanders whose other biggest hit was lilo and stitch um which is hawaiian is a hawaiian culture chris sanders is uh from colorado and he also fun fact this is is it fun i don't know he directed that new call the wild movie with harrison ford and a pile of tennis balls so you know he's fine he's never been held accountable finally back in his old white man genre telling stories he knows i guess i don't't know. Just me and my dog. But it is, I mean, it's like the two writers with the most credits on this movie are two white men who have been telling non-white stories from a place of ignorance for their entire careers to the tune of millions of dollars.

So for your consideration, let's take another quick break and then we will come right back. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhearts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption

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Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhard in you. Tune in for all the laughs, the's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person?

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I felt too seen. Um, dragged. I'm N.K., and this is Basket Case.

So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown. I was crying and I was inconsolable. It was just very big, sudden swaps of different meds. What is wrong with me? Oh, look at you giving me therapy, girl. Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies. On Basket Case, I talk to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.

Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with. But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you. And it will call you a basket case listen to basket case every tuesday on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back we're back um i have a list of ways in which this movie subverts a lot of disney movie tropes that i would like to share, especially of this Renaissance era. Yes. Because this is one of the later Disney Renaissance movies.

The era that fucked us all the way up. Yes, indeed. Yeah. I think people might disagree with me, but I do not think this is a princess movie. The merch would disagree with you, Caitlin. The merch would disagree. But I think that's also a good thing.

Net positive. To me, unlike a lot of other Disney movies, which are like the ones that are geared toward girls, they are princess fairy tale narratives. And even though this one is kind of based in ancient legend and, you know, it does feature a female lead, it's not like a princess, you know, getting locked in a tower, needing to be saved by a man, her prince charming, any like none of that type of stuff. She does not become a princess at the end. Yeah. No. Yeah. needing to be saved by a man her prince charming any like none of that type of stuff yeah yeah that whole yeah so you know just the message that rich conventionally beautiful usually white

young cis het women who are princesses looking for a prince are the only type of women who whose stories are worth telling um but mulan subverts that whole thing yes um i think she is the daughter of a wealthy family though just judging from they got property yeah they got property that was a nice piece of property like her own like zip code yeah it was like it was like very large and usually uh in china you can tell how fancy people are by how high their doorsteps are oh interesting yeah the higher the doorsteps the wealthier they are because you have to like cross this like massive threshold well by that metric yeah they're chilling they're good keeps the rats out um nice uh next one is that kind of like piggybacking off of it not being like a princess

fairy tale movie um mulan's goal does not have anything to do with finding a man or like having a romantic interest and you know while shang does show up at her house at the end and it's implied that she ends up with him romantically it's like not the focal point of the story in any way it's it feels like more of like an afterthought like denouement thing than any major part of the plot thank you for saying then anymore anytime yeah um and i would also argue well here's something that i am not too happy with but i think shang is like not the best love interest i agree but to be fair he's hot he's hot nipples to be fair he does i was trying okay i pause i couldn't tell does he have nipples because disney has this

weird thing where they're like men can be shirtless but they can't have nipples he does he did okay thank you because i was like king triton didn't have nipples and that that they were no king triton does does have prominent nipples oh so that they scale back the nipples because there was a time where there were shirtless men but they didn't have nipples because maybe king triton's nipples scared them off maybe but like aladdin does not have nipples? Because there was a time where there were shirtless men, but they didn't have nipples because maybe King Triton's nipples scared them off. Maybe. I don't know. But like Aladdin does not have nipples.

Aladdin. Oh, that's who famous. I thought for sure. I think Maiden Little Mermaid was just so sexual. They were like, we got to tote it back. Because the genie also doesn't have nipples. Both male protagonists are shirtless the whole time. Yeah.

And they don't have nipples. That's very true. And then you're just like, who is this for? Lishane's got anatomically correct Asian male nipples. Great. For the audience. Another point for the movie. The next thing on my list is that Mulan's mother is not dead.

She does not have a dead mom. But character wise. But character wise. She is not alive. She could just be the grandma. They could have just folded that into one character. Which is not alive she's she could just be the grandma they could have just folded that into one character which is like yeah they're to this day shamefully one of my mom's favorite disney exchanges in the whole canon is towards the end where the where mulan says would

you like to stay for dinner and the grandma says would you like to stay forever my mom howls she's like funniest joke ever written like that's my mom's bar for comedy i mean it's that exchange but yeah so her mom is a lot her mother is alive and we also see her grandmother both of those characters really just want mulan to be a bride and the movie does frame mulan's relationship with her father as the more important relationship in the story and i think a little more like even more frustrating on top of that is like her father seems to be the only person in her family who believes that she is capable of more than being a you know like very conscribed feminine person, which is frustrating. And like, doesn't I don't

know, like that, like, her father is the one who believes in her and her mother and her grandmother, who are both seem to be pretty strong female characters, don't believe that she's capable of more, it's like, well, then they might as well be dead. You know what I mean? I don't want them to but you know, like the fact that her father is the one who is presented as by far the most most sympathetic character yeah we're like he's the one that believes in her and he gets the big moment at the end of the greatest honor of all is having you as my daughter and i'm like weeping yeah but i'm also critical right yes next thing is from what i could tell the villain is not queer quoted like the villains are no it's just racist it's just racist so that's way better they don't even have human skin tones that's like

they're gray they're gray they're gray and he has yellow eyes that is i mean that is like some that is like a major issue i had on a rewatch of like they are drawn to not be people yeah the people who we are not given any perspective on why are they fighting what are they fighting for they're like they're on the opposite side of our protagonist and so we're going to draw them as gray immortal animals what if they're fighting for like universal health care and the emperor is just like fuck you get out of here most likely what if they're literally canvassing for bernie i mean that is how bernie bros appear on the line but then it's like but ultimately they have some good ideas you know i don't know my guess is that in the context of this kind of time period in china there's a bunch of warring tribes there's like there's no real china like

per se you know china's in its 4 000 years of history has had so many different iterations of its kingdom so the the sort of fancy side, the fancy Chinese in this movie are like the ones that have cities and stuff. Most likely they were the people that were levying taxes against the people that were more nomadic. They're centrists. Because they have the infrastructure to do it and to collect taxes.

And the invaders, usually nomadic invaders, don't want to pay taxes. that's why they're nomadic and maybe that's that might be what the invasion's about but the timeline is also super distorted it's so i in in the movie it says it takes place during it's like the han dynasty yeah which uh ended like a hundred years before like the Huns. The legend and the movie don't take place in the same era. No, I don't. Not even close.

I don't even know how intentionally that's done or if that was just like scattershot white writer being like here because the Han Dynasty from what research I've done seems to be kind of like a golden age of Chinese history. So I don't know if a white writer did a light Google almost like, sure, let's put it here. But that's not, it seems like the ballot of Mulan takes place after where we're being told

the movie takes place, which would be in BC and not AD. Yeah. So confusing. I know. Ancient history is wild in any case the villain is not queer coded the way that many villains um of this you know disney renaissance era are i wouldn't give that a point though because it's just racist instead of being queer coded it's like uh racist

and making it to seem like it's a zombie animal that's true okay so withdraw but instead of queer coded it's just worse worse well and i don't mean to sound like i'm defending anything here but the the queer coded villains are also racist in these in you know lion king and ursula because they always have darker skin and things like that yes i mean and this is the very least but like at least in some cases the queer coded villains have been reclaimed. I do not see anyone reclaiming this villain. No one is like, I see myself like, fuck you, Disney. I'm reclaiming Sean Yu.

Like no one has reclaimed Sean Yu. No, that's true. Plenty have reclaimed Ursula in a very powerful way that is like a middle finger to the Disney Corporation that's also given him a lot of money. She's a businesswoman and a lawyer, of course. Shanyu has made zero dollars in the past 10 years. If the color we're talking about is green, Shanyu is negative.

Another one, Mulan never has to be saved. I don't think. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't notice any moment where she had to be but she does save she saves uh shang during the avalanche and then again toward the end when um shanyu is about to kill shang and mulan like throws a shoe at him and she's like it was me who took your victory away and then mulan and shanyu battle each other which leads me to the next kind of trope being subverted, which is Mulan gets to defeat the villain during the climax of the movie.

And she fights with weapons and not pots, pans, domestic items, which is how we normally see if a woman is allowed to fight and defend herself. It is with traditionally feminine objects. Right. it is with traditionally feminine objects right like mulan is using like real weapons whereas her friends her army buddies who are dressed in drag by the way in this in this climactic sequence yeah um they are using like fruit to fight the bad guys so it's like i guess i mean i don't know what that suggests exactly an inversion that you're like so it's like i guess i mean i don't know what that suggests exactly like a version that you're like what right it's like well it's like men who are presenting as women still using domestic items to fight with i think i'm fine with it i don't know it didn't bother me

well the the fun part of that scene on the roof with shang yu is that she's fighting him with like the sort of the born identity items like a random stick or something right but then she takes shang yu's sword from him yes and that's the badass one where you're like oh shit's about to get real you got your sword taken away racist stereotype you're like listen racist villain she got to the top of the pole you don't understand like it's exciting yeah um and i well i was worried that this wouldn't be the case because you know we see in uh little mermaid and beauty and the beast where even though the protagonists of those movies are women it's always the male love interest

who steps in and like defeats the villain yeah but so i was like oh no is this gonna happen again especially when i don't even know where shang is for the majority of the he does yeah he's like i'm asleep he does kind of burst in and fight shen you for like a minute but then then he gets knocked away and then mulan takes over and right fights with weapons she uses cannons she uses swords and bows and arrows and like all this stuff and shang gets pretty much sidelined from that you know final climactic battle sequence. He breaks her fall. That's how important to the fight he is. He breaks her fall.

He does what a well-placed pole could do. So, yeah, those are the main things I clocked in terms of this movie subverting. And I just think that like Mulan as a character overall is just better characterized and like someone the little girls and anyone who's watching this movie can look up to far more than the main strength of this movie is mulan like she fucking rules like no one will ever talk me out of mulan rules she's amazing and and she's also from what I was able to track, the first non-white person, whether justified or not, included in Disney Princess Canon, who isn't sexualized within an inch of her life. Because that was a huge, I mean, with Jasmine, Esmeralda, and Pocahontas, they were three brown women of different ethnicities who were over-sexualized, and it was a big problem.

And this was one of the first things where you're like, did Disney take a note? Because Mulan is not sexualized. She, like... Her body's mostly hidden. Right, and that kind of lines up with like her character has no vested interest in appearing in a sexualized way and it's like it's one thing if like a female character is like i want to present a certain way but that is not

her stated intent and the movie doesn't subject her to anything that doesn't make sense and i thought that like that that is like unfortunately a huge step forward for disney renaissance movies especially is not right like i mean not they they sexualize all women but they especially over sexualize non-white women yes so in that way you're like and there could have been an opportunity because there's that scene where she takes a bath in like the pond yeah she gets naked and then there's that oh no she has tits right right but like all of that is handled like very responsibly as far as as well as pg is handled yes yeah but then like that reminds me of the moment in little mermaid when ariel has just gotten her legs for the first time and she's swimming to the surface and then she like bursts through the surface and there's this shot. She's like silhouetted by the sunlight, but it's like really sexualized where she's like wet hair whips around and her whole body is rising. I mean yeah I mean god I don't want to I mean how can my like all of my various eating disorders

be traced back to Disney movies don't want to think about it but I don't think Mulan was a contributor so well that's a good transition into talking about how masculinity is portrayed in this movie I think that it's mostly good points that are brought up but I do have some thoughts on it where I feel like Mulan's character in many ways is presented as a direct challenge to like Mushu who is a character that I'm like I honestly am like on the rewatch I'm like not very attached to because he is like the joke is that he's very fixated on his own size and the joke is that he's kind of misogynist but we like him and like I kind of had it with that and like whatever Eddie Murphy's warming up for donkey and we salute him but in general I mean I like those scenes where mulan is presented with quote-unquote

traditional masculinity which is like sweaty and aggressive and mean and she's kind of like ew i hate that i have to she resents that she has to participate in it uh there's that scene where mushu is talking her through her first interaction as a man with a man and it's like she punches him in the face and she slaps his ass yeah and that's the whole interaction and it like sort of works and you're just like okay but and then there's that other um the other interaction that Mulan has that I feel like is in complete challenge to the masculinity presented by the soldiers is when they're singing a girl we're fighting for a song that i have problems with uh but where mulan's only line in that song is she's like how about a girl that has a brain that always speaks her mind and everyone's like

fuck you that was the moment where i was like female comic where it's like she female comic. Yeah. Where it's like she's almost fit again, but then she almost stands up for women and everyone's like, get out of here. Right, because the lines before that are like, we want a woman who's really hot, who will, you know, really congratulate me on my masculinity, my battle scars. And then the one guy is like, I don't care what she looks like, but she has to cook me meals all the time which is a fat joke also on top of that it's just that i've kind of conflicted with how the soldiers that aren't lee shang because i feel like he's in like romantic interest category but the three soldiers that she becomes friends with there's good things and there's bad things because by the end they realized they should never have underestimated ping mulan and that a woman is capable of so much more than what they were

singing about but ultimately it's kind of i feel like kind of falls into like the friendly misogynist trope where we hear them there's a lot of like constantly they're like i want a hot woman i am very like committed to this style of soldier misogyny that also feels very western too it's like very 1998 western culture but we also love them and it's so it's like they sort of learn a lesson at the end but i feel like it doesn't go far enough because they are just like lovable misogynists ultimately i think their their supposed redeeming scene is at the end in the that battle where uh shang yu comes out and he's fighting li shang and then the emperor's gone and they actively decide to group around mulan right when they make that choice that's the that's the that's the choice that's supposed

to justify all the misogyny right i think and i i it's like and i like that it it it lands somewhere but there's still a whole song about misogyny that we've been thinking that we know by heart yeah and it's like somebody so everything in a movie is intentional nothing's accidental somebody was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for that song and then singers were also booked time separately to sing that song and then sound engineers were also paid to mix that song so when you think about how much work it takes to put a song into the movie sure you really have the question like does this misogyny the anthem have to be in this movie about like empowering a young girl?

I feel like I have three songs in this movie and this is one of them. Yeah. Oh, really? Is that all? Reflection, Make a Man Out of You, and Girl with Frighteners. Oh, there's one at the beginning when there's the matchmaker song. Oh, there's the matchmaker song. I mean, 20, so 50% of the songs are aggressively misogynist the first song in the last song so

once again I don't want to sound like I'm defending anything that's bad but like I read that is one of the obstacles that like Mulan has to overcome is like misogyny and like that's why that song is there do we need it there do those lyrics does it have to be so catchy right does it right does it have to slap like it's like they did too good of a job with the misogyny anthem and i feel the same i feel this i feel the same way about like i've i used to tell a joke about this and i was like i gotta grow up but one of the best songs in hunchback of notre dame is the priest singing about how he wants to murder a woman if she won't fuck him and it slaps it's so it's such a good song and i know every word and you're like this can't like i mean the villain songs are always the best songs and maybe we can interpret this as the villain song maybe i mean because misogyny is a villain sing a song i

mean it's like i feel like that is kind of a gray area but like i feel like the song with the worst message shouldn't slap the hardest i see your point yes that's a new rule i'm putting it down i do like it has to be like not the best song yeah yeah it should be like the collaboration between phil collins and insane you know like that should be the writing team behind the song it has to be there it has to be like mediocre and not memorable because if it's good then you'll know all the words and you'll like whether intentionally or not sort of internalize it sure you know i do like though where like mulan's relationship with those like three soldier friends of hers like lands where they once they realize oh she is worth trusting they get on her side again they dress in drag and then they like use the method that she used to like shimmy up the pole during their training so that gets like called back to that's how they like get into like the emperor's

like chambers so they can save him like all that stuff so i i at least like how mulan has allies by the end um of course none of them are women she has no female friends in this story well that's that's the big failing of well not i wouldn't call it a failing because the the story wasn't sort of meant for this but that the myth of mulan doesn't spread amongst young women and make young women want to like take places for their fathers and wars and yeah and that she mulan remains an exceptional woman and that's like that's always like the thing the the pick me trope you know like where you like yeah pick me i'm special i'm not like these other girls and unfortunately Mulan does

fall into I'm not like other girls territory that's so that I mean just you're saying that it's just like because we've been making fun of the not like the other girls trope for so long but the way you just for I mean like it does I feel like the not like the other girls trope there isn't really a not like the other guys trope and I feel like that is a way to tell women that you have to believe that you are the only person who can do this as a way to discourage you from encouraging other women to do the same thing that you're doing like it it does feel like a I mean even in in our common experience of comedy like I was always frustrated by like why are all the like it's so

easy for male comics to make friends with each other there's there seems to be really not a lot of intense competition among them where when I was starting I felt like female comics were felt to be in competition because there were just less spots for them and so a defense tactic would be a not like the other girls like well what I do is and what the other people do. And it is, I feel like it's like a patriarchal thing to be told. Like you have to be so confident in yourself that you want to actively discourage other women,

women from doing the same thing. Fuck. I mean, and I, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, the idea of like, not like the other girls. And what does that mean? Because on one hand, like, the way this movie partly frames that idea is Mulan kind of rejecting femininity in is often forced on women by men or by patriarchal standards sure and that might make her seem like not one of the other girls but that's in a way that like that's her choice she's

expressing her authentic self you know she's she might not be as feminine as other women or you know whatever but to me i didn't really have any problem with that. The way it's, at least that specific aspect of it is depicted in this movie because the whole setup, like the whole first act of this movie is us being shown Mulan not fitting the mold of what's expected of a woman and a bride in her community and culture like you know the world of

this movie um because what's expected of a woman is to be quiet and delicate and obedient and you know these porcelain doll wives who will bear children and you know mulan doesn't really want to participate in that um there's that whole song the you know the one that we forgot about the you'll bring honor to us all i think is the name of it but you know the lyrics are things like a girl can bring honor to her family in one way by striking a good match this could be the day men want girls with good taste calm obedient who work fast paced with good breeding and a tiny waist you'll bring on just sing it caitlin i can't i don't know they're they're i know but i think that that song i like i just have such conflicted feelings about it because i feel like that song

is used to make every woman in the movie who is in milan to look bad yes like why is that you know I feel like it comes from the same place yes the only ally to Mulan in her life even remotely is her father right okay yes I agree with that every woman in her life is against her I guess I what I'm saying is just the idea of like you know being yourself and if yourself is a little like you know tomboyish or if you like don't want to be a wife um and like that's just like who you are and what you want and like as long as you're like not dismissing or judging other people who do want that which i don't think mulan isn't is yeah so i agree there is like a conflicting message to be had here because that whole setup serves to show like yeah mulan isn't this like

obedient submissive woman she's strong she's outspoken she's smart all that stuff but it does end up painting all those women who do like want to go to the matchmaker and be matched with a husband it makes them seem like oh what fools it paints them very broadly yeah yes and to think about everything economically because every decision that these characters make in life is tied to like how they're able to live is that the women are making these choices because they have to marry out of the family because the family can no longer support them you know so it's like they literally are getting married to live that is right that that's something that's like in the first brush of this movie it feels like a choice but it's really not a choice if it's frustrating to see a movie of any i mean and mulan is not the only

movie to do this and it's not the worst offender of this but to make it seem like this is what women truly deeply want because they are petty and vapid as opposed to like literally this is the only way in this historical context to survive and there are complicated feelings that come with that there is an opportunity to show that with her mother and her grandmother but it just kind of ends up seeming like they're not exactly shrewish but like rigid in that way of like and and i feel like as a kid especially you don't fully understand where that's coming from and the movie doesn't really attempt to explain it to you no no i think it's it's almost too complicated for a disney movie right to to explain but the place it comes from is does feel shallow no i agree yeah i don't know i mean it's like it's but

ultimately mulan is the like the best heroine in disney canon up to this point so it's like you have to give it its due and you know what else she is what the baldest woman in charge even though she doesn't like shave her head or anything but she does cut her hair that is like such a great and oh that montage i'm like i'm like it does so much to like it's like almost bawling from it and I'm like oh this like glorifies going to war but I'm like but I'm crying so I don't know what I feel it's like ultimately we do see her like making a gigantic sacrifice for the

patriarchal figure in her life to go to war for them but you're also like but then she realizes like I did this for myself so I don't know I love it I mean and the idea of I've read a number of things that are about gender performativity theory as it pertains to this movie. One great analysis I read was independently published by a writer named Julianne Fung, who generally praises and argues that the main theme of Mulan is a film that is about gender performance.

She's she's using the hit she's using judith butler you know like she's uh but but saying that basically one of the things that makes mulan remarkable is that she recognizes that gender is in many ways a performance and she learns to perform it to and and then by the end of the movie has like effectively convinced hyper masculine soldiers that gender is a performance to the point where they're willing to experiment with it themselves at the climax where they dress in drag very confidently and are successful. And you can make an argument of like,

is a mockery being made of them? Is it kind of played for laughs? I think in some ways it is in the same way that at the climax of the lion king, Timon is wearing this little like grass skirt and he's like, I think in some ways it is. Yes. In the same way that at the climax of The Lion King, Timon is wearing this little like grass skirt. Oh, yeah. And he's like, it's not totally great because it's a little bit of joke, but it also like on paper, it's like these hyper-masculine soldiers

are willing to play around with gender performativity theory. And like, that doesn't happen a lot. That's cool. And they're not punished for it. They're successful. Yeah. They defeat the villain. Yeah. Who's just advocating for. theory and like that doesn't happen a lot that's cool and they're not punished for it they're successful yeah they were they defeat the villain yeah who's just advocating for socialized medicine um that's literally he's great because he needs health because he's sick he has yellow eyes he's jaundiced why is medicare for all the villain i don't understand

um one of my favorite lines in the movie is when Mulan, like, first shows up to, like, the boot camp. And she's, something happens where she, like, punches one of the guys to, like, try to fit in and, like, be, you know, be a man. But she says, you know how it is when you get those manly urges and you just got to kill something. Because, like, she is, it's like just you know gender performance the last thing i wanted to say just of like something that i because i've been trying to sort of keep up on as of this recording none of us have seen the new mulan movie it's not out i really hope that it's good they're yeah the other ones have not been no i mean but it's also like they've all made money they've made money but it's very possible that it'll be fine and make a billion dollars which is also like whatever i'll see it yeah i have yet to see a live action adaptation in theaters um oh sure i've seen most of them and

i have an amc pass and i still have i know i'm part of the problem i but like this one i will see because mulan means i think of this era the most to be out of any of them but it is there is still it seems like that persistent problem of this movie is trying to be a negotiation between the American and Chinese film industry is the two most powerful film industries on the planet and from what I have read about the plot of this movie there have been narrative changes but all of them that I've read about you're of this movie there have been narrative changes but all of them that I've read about you're just kind of like is that better or is it just different yeah where in this adaptation the idea of arranged marriage is really really pushed

when it's like this was never even a part of the the source material like it's really frustrating and it seems like what the live action 2020 adaptation is referring to instead of the source material which is more progressive than the 1998 adaptation as it's referring to an earlier draft of the 1998 adaptation that was scrapped because what I found in my research was the first pitch of this movie is that she, that Mulan is betrothed to Li Shang. And that through resentment of the person she's betrothed to, she's motivated to pose as a man to get out of an arranged marriage. Which is, however you feel about it, very different from the source material right and that seems to be and i don't know what the exact but it seems like it's instead of it's just like man something

written in ancient times is more progressive than what we're doing now jesus fucking christ there's an alternate um version of uh of her love interest which is that she was and it's actually a really progressive vision of love which is something i don't think about with ancient chinese stories but she's engaged she's one of the most beautiful women most accomplished women in the village and she's engaged to a man who appreciates her unconditionally and even though they're absolutely in love with each other and he's like literally mr perfect she breaks the engagement to save her dad it's like fully like seated choices as an individual so she breaks her

perfect engagement with her perfect man to go save her dad and then during the course of the battle she meets her fiance again and by this time because her fiance is such an amazing man, he's the military strategist in this war. So she has to hide from him because she's like in full drag as a man. So in her sort of hidden agenda where she's on a different side of the mountain from him so that he can't out her,

that's how she defeats the enemies because she's in the right place at the right time like how do i feel about it's more interesting than this idea that i just read wow yeah i'm like i need to take a second on that one uh the last thing that i had to say was just a funny uh anecdote that just i think just like speaks to how rigid the disney formula was especially at this time where it's like female protagonist has to sing a song about what she wants at the beginning she has an animal sidekick and a secondary animal sidekick this is like well documented in all of them i think it's most clearly taken from book honest where you have

miko the raccoon and flit the bird there's two and Mulan is a copy paste of that where I guess that like like executives were pushing the cricket so much no one wanted the cricket everyone's like the cricket doesn't do anything cricket can't talk why is the cricket here everyone including the two cishet white male directors were like we don't want the cricket uh director Barry Temple said quote the directors didn't want the cricket in the movie a story department didn't want the cricket in the movie the only people who wanted him in the movie were michael eisner and a pet cricket when i was a child and then barry temple says i would sit in meetings and they'd say well where's the

cricket during all this and someone would say fuck the cricket so just uh if you're wondering why the cricket is very sparky i guess everyone was just like we don't know what to do with the cricket we already have eddie murphy what more do you want from us yeah i mean the cricket is lucius sidekick i was a psychic i was like he's like a forest to your sidekick yeah justice for the cricket but he knows how to write we see him like writing something on a leaf he can read he can read and write he's very educated yeah why can't we justice for the cricket no one wanted going back to the live action thing um the live action mulan seems to have eliminated the villain of shanyu uh and added instead a witch um yes the hawk or the falcon or whatever type of bird that is

that we see in the animated version is now a witch who can animorph into this bird remains to be seen whether this is a good idea right i mean it adds another female character but it might be exactly but gonely is amazing so i'm here for it good good um and then mulan seems to have a sister now as referenced in one of the trailers so i don't know hard to say how important that character will be but they seem to be doing what all these live action disney movies are doing which is like add some female characters some female friends for you know the the women the female protagonists in the movie to like appease fans probably yeah well and i and i'm glad that we are seeing and it's also a female director of the new mulan movie although there's

still she is a white lady from new zealand and so i feel like it kind of remains to be seen to how effective this adaptation will be i feel like there is a lot of and lindsey once again queen lindsey ellis has done an excellent if kind of like oh no to watch uh video essays about the kind of wokeifyingifying of these Disney reboots and how meaningful is it and how much of it is motivated by money and just saying things that modern audiences wanting to hear while still not ultimately like updating what their values are. Yeah.

So we'll see. We'll see. I want to be I'm I'm cautiously optimistic, but we've but 500 of these movies have come out and none of them have been good i hope it's good i hope it's good um does the movie pass the bechdel test i don't think so i actually forgot to pay attention once again i think yeah the the grandma and the mom might have had a conversation about mulan which technically passes the bechdel test right i think

it depends i think on this i'm not like strictly like it may pass once but the context of what they're talking about is always marriage yes right marriage to a man i feel like it doesn't pass i don't know i was reading in the forums of like there's been more so than almost any other movie i've ever checked on this because I but at the end I was like I don't really know and then I checked in the forums and people are back and forth a lot of people are like technically yes some people say that the female ancestors talk to each other but we don't know what their names are so for us that doesn't pass I'm gonna say that it for me it doesn't pass and I think that that's a testament to the fact that this is

a movie where we have a very strong female protagonist who has no woman to talk to yeah right because even the conversations between women either whether it's you know milan and her mother or grandmother or the matchmaker the context like we said of almost every one of those conversations even though there might be like two line exchanges where a man's name isn't mentioned, the context of the entire conversation will still be like, are you primped enough to be a bride kind of thing to a man? I think that this is kind of a movie ultimately that I, to my grave, will defend Mulan.

I love Mulan the person, but I think in terms of how this movie portrays women, it ultimately is like the exceptional woman and not that women are exceptional. Yes. Yes, indeed. That's always the way of putting it. That's my pull quote. Also, war is bad.

War is bad. That and war is bad is what I'd like for you to talk about. Put it on a t-shirt. Bye-bye. Well, that brings us to our nipple scale. Zero to five nipples based on its representation of women. I mean, all things considered, it does a pretty good job, at least compared to other comparable Disney Renaissance movies. It is, you know, the most empowering one to date. And then, you know, then Moana came along.

We're like, well, but Moana came along almost 20 years later and moana isn't perfect yes which contrary to our critique um but like i said i wish i had had this movie to grow up with um instead i like latched on to little mermaid and we already talked about how many problems that movie has um i think i'll give it a three um i'm that might be a little too generous or maybe not generous enough sometimes i really miss fire on the nipple rating and you know it's a hard metric but you know i think the way that it subverts a lot of the tropes specifically of disney movies while it also adheres to a lot of kind of the you know problematic things that we've already discussed.

Yeah, I think I'll stick with a three. Mulan as a character is terrific. I hope this live action reboot does her even more justice. Remains to be seen. But three nipples. I will give one of them to Shang and his visible nipples. I will give one. And then I'll just give the other two to milan i'm gonna go three and a half on this i'm also very biased towards this movie because it's like one of those movies that i have seen a million times and it feels very like in my dna of

just how much i love it uh But I feel like for its time, this is as progressive as children's media was getting on a mass scale. I think that like young, just young people in general seeing this movie like got a view of a female protagonist that they really had never gotten on a mass scale prior to this point. She is never a damsel in distress.

She is very motivated she is amazing i feel like the main fault of this movie is not letting that inspire the women around her and making her i feel like it almost is kind of oppressive to isolate her as the exception to the rule rather than someone who could inspire the women around her um and plus the other thing i mean i think the way that the the huns are portrayed is like flat out racist um the fact that this movie was directed by cishet white men and majority written by them and the more you learn about them the less good it gets um there's a lot of classic disney faults going on here but i think that they in spite of a lot of stuff they managed to pull off i think maybe their most progressive movie to date at this time and and at least a lot of them a lot of the cast are voiced by asian actors a lot but not all of

them not all of them but more than i expected honestly when i went through harvey firestein is in the book so you're like he's one of the soldiers right yes yes and so you're like uh you know you know eddie murphy is warming up for donkey whatever like there there's a lot of stuff in this movie that's of its time such as the stevie wonder 98 degrees collab couldn't have happened in any year but 1998 ultimately i think it's net There's a lot of stuff in this movie that's of its time, such as the Stevie Wonder 98 Degrees collab. Couldn't have happened in any year but 1998. Ultimately, I think it's net positive. I would happily show this movie to a young person today.

I think it super holds up. And it's kind of, I don't know, it definitely changed my perspectives at the time. And it's great. I love it. Three and a half nips to go to mulan one and a half go photo realistically to lee shang nice so i think i will do three nips on mulan two to mulan one to lee shang being portrayed as a leading man Asian love interest, which is pretty rare in all movies across all American filmmaking history. Nipple really taken away for just a weird mashup of Asia they presented. Sure. I feel like they could have definitely done more research, just been a little bit more specific.

And just, I don't know, one chinese person other than uh was the one chinese like woman of chinese descent who worked on this movie yeah yeah or in the on the writing team well otherwise thoroughly enjoyable really love this movie yeah yeah for sure well cedar thank you so much for being here thank you for having me thank you so much we always love thank you for having me we always love having you what would you like to plug where can people follow you I am working on a lot of things but none of them are pluggable

so just follow me on my twitter I'm at slowbear s-l-o-b-e-a-r amazing Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was assassinated. Crooks Everywhere unearthed the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.

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